1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to products to permit the enteral feeding of patients, and in particular to an improved feeding tube spike set with integrated Y-port.
2. Description of Related Art
There are two problems associated with enteral patient feeding. The first problem is the inadvertent disconnection of the tubing leading to the feeding tube, the other involves the difficulty of administering water to the patient. The solution provided by previous inventors, namely Michels et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,322,073 and D360,030, involved providing a y-tube connector that included an integrated retaining strap for the disconnectable tubing entering the connector from the nutrient container. The problem with this arrangement is that the user is required to unplug the entrance to the y-tube and then connect the hose into the y-tube through this cumbersome retaining strap. What would be better would be to simply provide an integrated system that includes all components necessary from the nutrient supply to the enteral connector.
The second problem involves the y-port fitting in the spike set. This y-port fitting is provided to enable health care personal to inject water to either flush the system or to hydrate the patient. The difficulty involves the fact that there are a variety of different means by which the water is introduced into the y-port connector. Many times a variety of different sizes of syringes might be used. In many cases however, the tip of the syringe does not exactly match the configuration of the port in the y-port fitting. What would be very beneficial would be to provide a y-port fitting that permits a wide variety of syringe configurations to be inserted into the fitting, and sealing the syringe tip connection to prevent leakage of water or other material when the patients being hydrated.